HOLIDAY IN / COYOTE

*a geological, indigenous history of north-east Kansas as dreamt by the Topeka Holidome on 6th & Fairlawn, spring 1989

An official and unofficial fellow drink at the bar. A lone child plays the arcade. The swimming pool licks itself. Front desk checks in. A coyote roams the premises. And a glacier waits for a passing elder.

Set in a Holiday Inn Holidome – a brand of the franchise that proliferated the United States in the 1970’s & 80’s as a resort-like setting for the middle class – and in the middlest part of the country, where quiet and subtle magic occur, a family checks in to escape their home, six blocks away. Over the course of the evening, the hotel’s non-human inhabitants and the surrounding landscape overtake the narrative, as the forgotten geological, ecological and indigenous histories of the Great Plains come into focus for the hotel’s guests.